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While the United States is not yet close to a full-on autocracy, the New York Times editorial board outlines some of the warning signs of democratic erosion already taking place, thanks to the efforts of President Trump.

According to Livy's Periochae, L. Cornelius Cinna and C. Marius were elected to the consulship of 86 BC 'without recourse to any electoral assembly' (citra ulla comitia). Keywords: Roman elections - L. Cornelius Cinna - C. Marius - Livy's Periochae - Appian John Ramsey presented a strong case in a paper published in this journal in 2016 that Pompey was elected sole consul by the comitia centuriata in 52 BC.1 Asconius' informed account is to be preferred over those of later imperial authors which asserted that it was the senate that chose him, a procedure not securely attested in late republican Rome. [...]the third section ('Elections without Competition') argues that competition was suppressed in elections during the Cinnanum tempus. Elections, then, may be seen as a method of consolidating power; the annulment of this republican 'cornerstone' would serve only to jeopardise it.

How do duly elected rulers weaken checks on executive power, curtail civil and political liberties, and undermine the integrity of the electoral process? Drawing on sixteen cases of backsliding from Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa as well as the United States, our theory of backsliding focuses on three causal mechanisms: the pernicious effects of polarization; rulers’ control of the legislature; and the incremental nature of abuses of power, which divide and disorient oppositions.

An intriguing phenomenon consists in the fact that widespread support for democracy coexists in many countries with the persistent absence of democracy itself. Addressing this phenomenon, we show that in most places where it exists people understand democracy in ambiguous ways, such that “authoritarian” notions of what democracy means mix with—and even overshadow—liberal notions, in spite of the contradiction between these two notions. Underlining this contradiction, our evidence shows that authoritarian notions of democracy question the authenticity of liberal notions when both are endorsed conjointly. Worse, the evidence further suggests that authoritarian notions reverse the whole meaning of support for democracy, indeed indicating support for autocracy instead. Arguably, this reversal in the meaning of support for democracy lends legitimacy to authoritarian rule, which helps to explain where autocracy endures. Testing alternative explanations of authoritarian notions of democracy, we find that emancipative values are most influential, exerting a two-fold “enlightening” effect in (a) making people recognize the contradiction between liberal and authoritarian notions of democracy and (b) turning them against authoritarian notions. In a nutshell, the prospects of democracy are bleak where emancipative values remain weak.

Debates about democratic decline are now dominated by the notion that many democracies might be undergoing a process described as democratic backsliding. While the concept can play its part, the emergence of a backsliding paradigm risks reproducing, in reverse, the intellectual constraints of the transition paradigm of the 1990s, famously critiqued by Thomas Carothers. The complex, halting trajectories of troubled democracies today may be hidden behind a one-size-fits-all paradigm. Drawing lessons from East-Central Europe, we propose a broader focus that also encompasses intermediate patterns, often more faithful to realities on the ground.

Competitive authoritarianism—in which the coexistence of meaningful democratic institutions and serious incumbent abuse yields electoral competition that is real but unfair—is alive and well, nearly two decades after the concept was introduced in the Journal of Democracy. This is surprising, because the Western liberal hegemony of the 1990s, which led many full autocracies to become competitive authoritarian, has waned. Competitive politics persists because many autocrats lack the coercive and organizational capacity to consolidate hegemonic rule, and because the alternatives to multiparty elections lack legitimacy across the globe. Recently, new competitive authoritarian regimes have emerged in countries with strong democratic institutions, raising concerns about the diffusion of competitive authoritarianism to the West.

The global spread of electoral gender quotas has been characterized as one of the most significant institutional developments of the last 30 years. Many of the countries that have adopted these laws designed to increase women's political representation are electoral autocracies that have otherwise-stark gender inequalities. Some scholars argue that electoral authoritarian states have adopted quotas as a strategy for improving their international reputations for democracy. This article represents the first exploration of whether quotas really generate reputational boosts. Using large-scale survey experiments in Sweden and the United States concerning hypothetical developing countries, we find that they do. In particular, audiences perceived electoral autocracies as more democratic and were more likely to support giving them foreign aid when women's descriptive representation was greater. Beyond its contribution to our understanding of gender quotas and women's representation, this article contributes to broader debates about international reputation, human rights, and foreign aid attitudes.